Method, system, and program for filtering content using neural networks

ABSTRACT

Provided are a method, system, and program for filtering communications received from over a network for a person-to-person communication program. A communication is received for the person-to person communication program. The communication is processed to determine predefined language statements. Information on the determined language statements is inputted into a neural network to produce an output value. A determination is made as to whether the output value indicates that the communication is unacceptable. The communication is forwarded to the person-to-person communication program unchanged if the output value indicates that the communication is acceptable. An action is performed with respect to the communication upon determining that the communication is unacceptable that differs from the forwarding of the communication that occurs if the output value indicates that the communication is acceptable.

Related Applications

[0001] This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/478,925, filed on Jan. 6, 2000, which patent application is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

[0002] 1. Field of the Invention

[0003] The present invention relates to a system, method, and program for filtering content from an incoming data stream being accessed by a viewer program using a neural network to inhibit access to material deemed unacceptable.

[0004] 2. Description of the Related Art

[0005] Although the Internet is heralded as a revolutionary technology capable of empowering people by providing relatively easy access to a tremendous store house of information, it is also derided for allowing unrestricted access to material considered highly inappropriate for children, such as pornography, hate literature, and violence. Many lawmakers and various interest groups have called for government censorship of the Internet because of the availability of such controversial material. One other concern with the Internet has been the ability of children to engage in inappropriate communications with adults on IRC chat lines that not only exposes children to inappropriate material, but also facilitate inappropriate encounters between children and adults. Businesses that network their employee computers to the Internet are also concerned that employees spend time on non-business related Internet activity. Thus, businesses are also interested in controlling which Internet sites their employees may visit to prevent unproductive employee Internet access.

[0006] The response of the computer industry to these concerns has been the development of filtering software, such as Net Nanny by Net Nanny LTD., which is described in the “Net Nanny User Guide” (Copyright Net Nanny LTD., 1997). Such prior art filtering software is capable of monitoring Internet software, such as browsers, e-mail and IRC chat room applications and also other application programs, such as word processing and image viewing applications, e.g., Adobe Photoshop, Corel Photo-Paint, and Microsoft Paint. Current filtering software operates by providing a list of Internet sites and words that could be deemed inappropriate to children. To monitor Internet sites, the filtering software developer provides user lists of inappropriate web sites and other Internet sites, such as newsgroups and IRC chat lines, that its in-house researchers have located and deemed inappropriate for a particular age group of children. The purchaser of the filter program, which may be a parent, library, school, etc, may then set the filter software to deny access to all the Internet sites on the provided list.

[0007] The current techniques for identifying undesirable web sites rely on the filter developer to provide thorough research on web sites and timely updates. However, there are an immeasurable number of Internet web sites, many of which cannot be located through traditional search engines. Thus, researchers may miss numerous Web sites containing inappropriate material that are not accessible through traditional search techniques. Further, web sites are being added and removed all the time. Thus, a child would have access to inappropriate sites that are added to the Internet between updates of the list.

[0008] The prior art method for filtering documents is to scan the document for words on a “hit list” of unacceptable words, and deny access to those documents containing a word on the hit list. This prior art technique for identifying inappropriate documents may screen or deny access to numerous acceptable documents. For instance, if the word “breast” is on the list, then the filtering software would deny access to documents describing cooking recipes for chicken breast or for medical documents on such important issues as breast cancer. In fact, many have criticized the use of word based lists as a filtering tool because it often screens out much useful educational information. For instance, if a list included common hate terms or a discussion of hate groups by a civil rights or anti-hate group, then such filtering software could conceivably deny access to deemed appropriate anti-hate literature.

[0009] Businesses are often interested in limiting not only what employees cannot access, like the child filtering product, but also limiting what they can access. For this reason, businesses may use firewall software that would prevent their employees from accessing any Internet sites except those specifically sanctioned or on an approved list. However, such techniques may be problematic because the employee could be barred from readily accessing a work-related site that is not on the approved list, such as a site linked to or mentioned from a site on the approved list.

[0010] Thus, there is a need in the art for an improved technique for filtering Internet and computer readable material for inappropriate content, while at the same time providing flexibility to allow access to educational material that may otherwise include words or phrases that are often associated with inappropriate material.

SUMMARY OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

[0011] To overcome the limitations in the prior art described above, preferred embodiments disclose a method, system, and program for filtering a data object for content deemed unacceptable by a user. A data object requested by a viewer program is received. The data object is processed to determine predefined language statements. Information on the determined language statements is inputted into a neural network to produce an output value. A determination is then made as to whether the output value indicates that the data object is unacceptable. Viewer program access to the data object is inhibited upon determining that the data object is unacceptable.

[0012] In further embodiments, a determination is made as to whether the output value indicates that the data object requires further consideration. If so, information on the data object is logged. User input on a rating indicating the acceptability of the data object is received and the neural network is trained to process the logged data object as input to produce the received rating as output.

[0013] The data object may comprise any incoming data stream, such as data from a document or one of multiple packets that form a document requested by the viewer.

[0014] In yet further embodiments, inhibiting the viewer program access to the data object upon determining that the data object is unacceptable comprises blocking access to the entire data object. Alternatively, a determination may be made of language statements in the data object that are unacceptable. In such case, inhibiting the viewer program access to the data object upon determining that the data object is unacceptable comprises blocking access to the unacceptable language statements and allowing access to language statements not determined to be unacceptable.

[0015] The preferred embodiments provide a filter program that is capable of considering more factors of a document than current filter software that would block access based on the presence of a single unacceptable word. The preferred filter program is capable of considering all unacceptable words as well as acceptable content words. The preferred embodiment filter program utilizes neural networks to train the filter to recognize when a document includes a level of inappropriate language that exceeds an acceptability threshold. Using neural networks allows the filter to consider documents that are not identical to the ones used to train the network; yet what was learned during training is applied to determine whether to inhibit access to a different document. The preferred filter program is an improvement over current art because it is less likely to deny access to acceptable documents that may otherwise include unacceptable words, whereas current filtering programs would reject a document upon the occurrence of a single specified unacceptable word.

[0016] Preferred embodiments that filter packets of data, typically transmitted over the Internet, are an improvement over current filter art utilizing lists of unacceptable Internet web sites because the preferred filter program will inhibit access to unacceptable Internet web sites that were not located by searchers creating the list of prohibited web sites or added to the Internet between updates of the list. The preferred filter program also reduces the cost of producing the filter software because the developer does not have to maintain a full-time staff of employees searching for inappropriate web sites to add to the lists of prohibited sites.

[0017] Further, in certain embodiments, only the inappropriate statements may be blocked without affecting other statements in the document or incoming data streams if inappropriate material is posted. For instance, if a child is at an acceptable children oriented IRC chat room and someone starts posting obscene or other inappropriate material, only those incoming data streams that contain offensive material would be blocked, without affecting the ability to receive appropriate incoming data stream content from the site. With such embodiments, only access to the unacceptable content is blocked and incoming data streams with acceptable content are allowed through.

[0018] Moreover, preferred embodiments allow for continual consideration of Internet sites and documents that are not clearly acceptable or unacceptable by allowing the administrator, such as the parent or employer, to retrain the neural network filter program to provide a specific accept or deny outcome for such documents that do not fall within the unacceptable and acceptable ranges. This allows the administrator to tailor the neural network and provides even greater likelihood that access will not be inhibited to acceptable material including some inappropriate language.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0019] Referring now to the drawings in which like reference numbers represent corresponding parts throughout:

[0020]FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a computing environment in which preferred embodiments are implemented;

[0021]FIG. 2 illustrates a neural network used to implement the filter program in accordance with preferred embodiments of the present invention;

[0022]FIG. 3 illustrates logic to filter packets of a document in accordance with preferred embodiments of the present invention;

[0023]FIG. 4 illustrates logic to retrain the filter program in accordance with preferred embodiments of the present invention; and

[0024]FIG. 5 illustrates logic to filter a document in accordance with preferred embodiments of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

[0025] In the following description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings which form a part hereof and which illustrate several embodiments of the present invention. It is understood that other embodiments may be utilized and structural and operational changes may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention.

[0026]FIG. 1 illustrates a computing environment in which preferred embodiments are implemented. A computer system 2 includes a plurality of viewer programs 4 a, b, c and a filter program 6. The computer system 2 may comprise any computing device known in the art, such as a personal computer, mainframe, workstation, server, hand-held computing device, etc. The viewer programs 4 a, b, c may comprise application programs that enable users to view and/or transmit content, such as an HTML Web browser, newsgroup readers, word processing programs, image viewers (e.g., Adobe Acrobat), etc., and communication software that allows person-to-person communication over the Internet (e.g., chat room software, AOL Messenger, ICQ, etc.), The filter program 6 is capable of filtering content requested by the viewers 4 a, b, c in order to inhibit access to material deemed undesirable.

[0027] The viewers 4 a, b, c are capable of accessing data from the Internet and/or a storage system 8, which may comprise one or more hard disk drives, tape storage, CD-ROM diskette, electronic memory, or any other storage or memory medium known in the art. The term Internet 10 as used herein refers to the World Wide Web as well as any other network or Intranet to which the computer 2 has access. In preferred embodiments, the Internet 10 uses a communication protocol, such as TCP/IP, that transmits data in packets.

[0028] In alternative network embodiments, the filter program 6 may be included within a gateway computer or proxy server through which multiple computers in the same Local Area Network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN) access the Internet. In such case, the filter program 6 would filter content for all networked computers accessing the Internet through the gateway computer on which the filter program is installed. In this way, the users at the client computers cannot disable or affect the operations of the filter program 6 on the proxy server or gateway computer.

[0029]FIG. 2 illustrates a feed forward, back propagation neural network 20 in which the preferred embodiment filter program 6 is implemented. The feed forward back-propagation network 20 has an input layer, an output layer, and at least one hidden layer. Each layer is fully connected to the succeeding layer, which means that each node in one layer fully connects to each node of the following layer, i.e., each input node connects to every hidden layer node and each hidden layer node connects to every output node. In accordance with feedforward neural networks known in the art, a unique weighting value is applied to data flowing from one node into another node. The value of a hidden layer node is equal to the sum of data at all the weighted input nodes that connect to the hidden layer node. Likewise, each output node is equal to the sum of data at all the weighted hidden layer nodes that connect to the output layer node. As shown in FIG. 2, the sum result of all the operations is a single output value, which is preferably between 0 and 1. In preferred embodiments, the number of hidden nodes is equal to the number of input and output nodes divided by two and rounded up to the nearest whole number.

[0030] In preferred embodiments, the input nodes of the neural network 20 receive information on words included in the document or packet being analyzed and from this generate the output value from 0 to 1. The developer would train neural networks 20 for different age groups. Before the training, the developer would determine a rating for training documents between zero and one. The rating would be based on general standards of appropriateness for the protected user. The term “protected user” as used herein refers to a child, employee or other person whose access to material will be inhibited and “administrator” refers to the purchaser of the product who wants to inhibit the protected user's access to content deemed inappropriate, such as the parent, school administrator, employer, etc.

[0031] The filter program 6 may specify the output values that would be deemed acceptable, e.g., values between 0 and 0.3, values deemed in a grey area requiring further consideration by the administrator, e.g., values between 0.3 and 0.6, and values deemed unacceptable for the protected user, e.g., values between 0.6 and 1.0. The values for each of the three range categories, acceptable, grey area requiring further consideration, and unacceptable may be adjusted by the administrator. For instance, if the administrator did not want to spend time resolving incoming data streams receiving output values in the grey area, then the administrator would set the grey area requiring further consideration to a very small range. On the other hand, if the administrator wants to tailor the network and is concerned about screening out too much, then the grey area range would be expanded to provide the administrator more control over how the neural network 20 is trained.

[0032] During operation, the filter program 6 would search the training document or packet for instances of certain predetermined words, such as unacceptable words and acceptable content words. For instance, the filter program 6 could search for sexual words and medical or health related words that may indicate the sexual word is part of an otherwise acceptable educational document on health or medicine. The filter program 6 would then input information on the instances of the predetermined words at the input nodes of the neural network 20 to produce an output value within one of the ranges.

[0033] During training, if the output value from the training document does not have the rating assigned by the developer, then the developer will use back propagation neural network training techniques known in the art to train the neural network 20 to produce the desired output value for that document. The back propagation learning process to train the network to produce a specific outcome based on a specific input is performed in iterative steps: information determined from one of the training documents or packets, such as the number of instances of unacceptable words, is applied to the input nodes of the neural network 20, and the network produces some output based on the current state of it's synaptic weights (initially, the output will be random). This output is compared to the developer selected rating, and a mean-squared error signal is calculated. The error value is then propagated backwards through the network, and small changes are made to the weights in each layer. The weight changes are calculated to reduce the error signal for the training document and assigned rating in question. The whole process is repeated for each of the training documents, then back to the first case again, and so on. The cycle is repeated until the overall error value drops below some pre-determined threshold. When the error level has fallen below the threshold, the neural network 20 has learned the problem sufficiently. In alternative embodiments, neural network training algorithms known in the art other than back propagation may be utilized.

[0034] The filter program 6 developer would repeat this training process for numerous packets or documents having different levels of acceptability to train the network for a wide range of different types of packets files, e.g., acceptable health material discussing sexual material, unacceptable material discussing sex, etc. By training the neural network for a wide range of packets or documents, the likelihood is increased that the neural network 20 would produce an accurate rating for documents that are not identical to the training documents. Thus, with the preferred embodiments two documents from different Internet web sites that are similar in content but different in presentation would likely produce the same acceptability rating.

[0035] To determine the input to the input nodes of the neural network 20, the filter program 6 would search for certain inappropriate words or phrases, e.g., sexual references, non-work related terms that are usually inappropriately searched by employees (e.g., sports scores, stock quotes, news, etc), hate words, etc., and content words, such as words indicating a medical or health slant to the packet or file, and count the number of such inappropriate or content words in the packet or file. Each input node of the neural network 20 would correspond to the percentage of instances of one inappropriate or content word or phrase in the document. Thus, a weighted presence of the word or phrase is used. For instance, the presence of one inappropriate word in a large document would have a relatively low weighting, whereas the present of one or two inappropriate words in a one line sentence could have a significantly high weighting. The filter program 6 would then input the percentage of instances of a specified word on the corresponding node for that word or phrase. In this way, the neural network 20 would base its output value decision on the percentage of instances of a word in the document that was on the predetermined list of words to consider. In this embodiment, there would have to be a node for each word in the word list.

[0036] In alternative embodiments, the list may group words or phrases according to categories or classes of language, e.g., swear words, hate words, sexual references, etc. There would then be a node for each category of words. In such case, the input to the input node layer would be the percentage of instances of a word or phrase of a particular category in the packet or document being considered. In further embodiments, additional nodes may be provided to indicate word proximity to provide a further level of detail in the input information that is used to generate the output rating of the input packet or file.

[0037] In preferred embodiments, the filter program 6 would have to maintain a list of predetermined inappropriate and content words on which to search. However, unlike prior art filtering programs, the presence of a particular predetermined inappropriate word will not cause the automatic rejection of the file. Instead, all inappropriate words and content words will be considered together in the neural network 20 to determine the acceptability of the document based on how the network 20 was trained to handle such documents. Thus, the preferred embodiment neural network 20 would consider the context of the words and not just issue a “knee jerk” reaction based on the presence of a few inappropriate words. For instance, the presence of one swear word and numerous references to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution may produce a neural network 20 acceptable rating for a filter program 6 trained for older children in accordance with the preferred embodiments, whereas such content may produce an unacceptable determination in prior art filtering software.

[0038] In certain embodiments, access may be inhibited by denying access to only those portions that include acceptable material, but allowing access to other portions that do not include unacceptable material. For instance, if the filter program 6 considers each packet transmitted over the Internet, the filter program 6 may allow those yielding acceptable output values to flow to the viewer 4 a, b, c, while blocking access to packets producing unacceptable output values. In this way, access to an entire HTML document or communication will not be blocked, but only unacceptable parts. Thus, a child logged onto an appropriate children chat room will not be screened out from all chat room communications due to the presence of some person presenting an inappropriate message. The preferred embodiments would just screen out the inappropriate portions. In cases of filtering an entire document, the unacceptable phrases may be blocked out while allowing access to other parts of the document.

[0039]FIG. 3 illustrates logic implemented in the filter program 6 to screen packets transmitted over the Internet 10. Control begins at block 100 with the filter program 6 receiving a packet on a communication port connected to the Internet 10 destined for a viewer 4 a, b, c, such as an HTML browser, chat room program software, etc. The filter program 6 would process (at block 102) the packet and a predetermined list of words or phrases, i.e., language statements, to locate words in the document that are on the list and the number of occurrences of such listed words or phrases. For each located listed word or phrase in the packet, the filter program 6 would determine the percentage (at block 104) of the determined number of instances of such word in the document as a whole by dividing the number of instances of the listed word or phrase by the total number of words in the document. This weighted or percentage number of instances of the listed word or phrase (at block 105) would then be placed on the input node of the neural network 20 corresponding to that word. As discussed, there may be a node for each listed word or phrase or for categories of words or phrases. Further, there may be additional nodes indicating the proximity of listed words. After inputting the information on the listed words or phrases included in the document or proximity information to the neural network nodes, the filter program 6 executes (at block 106) the neural network 20 to forward the data at the input nodes to the hidden layer nodes and then to the output layer node, applying the weights determined during the learning process. The output of this operation is an output rating between 0 and 1.

[0040] The filter program 6 then determines (at block 108) whether this output rating falls within the acceptable range. If so, the filter program forwards (at block 110) the packet to the viewer program 4 a, b, c unchanged. Otherwise, if the output rating is not acceptable, then the filter program 6 determines whether the output rating is within the unacceptable range. If so, then the filter program 6 issues (at block 114) an error message. At this point, the error message could cause the filter program 6 to block the display of the entire document of which the packet is a part, or the filter program 6 could block the packet producing an unacceptable rating and allow other packets to proceed to the viewer 4 a, b, c. If the output rating is not unacceptable, then it would fall within the further consideration category. In such case, the filter program 6 would log (at block 116) the content of the packet to a journal, and generate an error message to handle the unacceptable packet in the manner handled at block 114.

[0041] In embodiments where the filter program 6 only inhibits access to packets or portions of the document including unacceptable words or phrases, access is maximized and protected users are not blocked from otherwise acceptable material that receives an unacceptable rating. At the same time, the protected user is shielded from those words that are deemed offensive. This is an improvement over current Internet filtering techniques that bar access to specific sites as any site, including those deemed generally acceptable, may be occasionally bombarded with inappropriate content. Thus, unlike the prior art filters, the preferred embodiments shield users from inappropriate content that appears on an otherwise acceptable site, such as if someone posts inappropriate messages in a child oriented chat room.

[0042]FIG. 4 illustrates logic implemented in the filter program 6 to allow an administrator to set ratings for packets or documents that are rated for further consideration, i.e., neither acceptable nor unacceptable. Control begins at block 150 with the initiation of a retraining routine to process those packets and or documents entered in the log requiring further consideration. This may be initiated by the administrator selecting through the filter program 6 graphical user interface (GUI) to retrain logged entries that yielded neither acceptable nor unacceptable ratings. The filter program 6 then displays (at block 152) the content of each packet logged at block 116 in FIG. 3. A GUI tool (not shown) would be provided to allow the administrator (parent) to assign a rating to the packet indicating its acceptability or unacceptability.

[0043] The filter program 6 then receives as input (at block 154) the administrator's selection of ratings assigned to logged packets. The filter program 6 then begins a loop at block 158 for each logged packet provided a new rating. For a selected logged packet, the filter program 6 determines (at block 160) the rating the user assigned to such packet. The filter program 6 then retrains the neural network 20, preferably using back propagation neural network training techniques known in the art, to adjust the weights applied between nodes to yield the rating assigned to the selected packet. To accomplish this, numerous iterations of the neural network 20 would be performed (at block 162) to adjust the weights until the output rating converged to the user assigned rating within an error threshold. Control then proceeds (at block 164) back to block 158 to consider any further selected logged packets. After training, the neural network 20 is configured to assign the administrator assigned rating to the packet. In this way, the administrator maintains the flexibility to retrain the network and the permissible content for new documents that are not rated clearly acceptable or unacceptable. This allows the filter program 6 to dynamically be adjusted for new documents and files.

[0044]FIG. 5 illustrates logic implemented in the filter program 6 to filter the content of a document being retrieved from storage 8 that is not transferred in packet, such as the case with the Internet 10 TCP/IP protocol. FIG. 5 is similar to FIG. 3 except that the entire document is screened and then any located words are passed through the neural network 20 to determine whether the document as a whole is acceptable or unacceptable. As with packets, when issuing the error message at block 214, upon determining that a document is unacceptable or needs further consideration, the filter program 6 could deny access to the entire document or filter out unacceptable words or phrases to display those portions of the document not including offensive languages. If a document was deemed acceptable, then no words, including those that are unacceptable, would be screened out. Further, the administrator may have an opportunity to retrain the neural network 20 to assign a specified rating to those documents logged at block 216 in FIG. 5, as with packets.

[0045] Preferred embodiments provide a more flexible approach to filtering inappropriate content than current filtering software techniques which merely screen for words. With preferred embodiments words are considered in context along with the number of occurrences of such words to assign a rating that is similar to what was assigned to the closest input document or packet used to train the neural network 20. By training the neural network with a wide range of document types, the neural network 20 is more likely capable of assigning an accurate ratings to different documents falling within the range of training documents or packets. The preferred approach attempts to provide a more realistic balance to filtering that takes into account other considerations of a document beyond the mere presence of an offending term or its point of origin, e.g., source Web site of term, to reduce the likelihood that appropriate and educational material is blocked.

CONCLUSION

[0046] The preferred embodiments may be implemented as a method, apparatus or article of manufacture using standard programming and/or engineering techniques to produce software, firmware, hardware, or any combination thereof. The term “article of manufacture” (or alternatively, “computer program product”) as used herein is intended to encompass one or more computer programs and/or data files accessible from one or more computer-readable devices, carriers, or media, such as magnetic storage media, “floppy disk,” CD-ROM, optical disks, holographic units, volatile or non-volatile electronic memory, etc. Further, the article of manufacture may comprise the implementation of the preferred embodiments in a transmission media, such as a network transmission line, wireless transmission media, signals propagating through space, radio waves, infrared signals, etc. Of course, those skilled in the art will recognize many modifications may be made to this configuration without departing from the scope of the present invention.

[0047] In preferred embodiments, the filter program 6 would search for listed or predefined words or phrases or word categories. The administrator may add, remove, or modify the predefined words/word categories on which searches are performed. If the administrator makes such changes, then the neural network 20 must be adjusted to remove or add input nodes and hidden layer nodes to accommodate the changes in the words/word categories upon which searches are performed. After the neural network 20 is adjusted, then the nueral network would have to be retrained using training documents to produce the desired output values.

[0048] Preferred embodiments provided specific architecture and node arrangements for the feed forward, back propagating neural network 20. However, those skilled in the art will appreciate that alternative node arrangements, including the use of more or fewer layers of nodes, may be used with the described neural network architecture.

[0049] In summary, preferred embodiments disclose a method, system, and program for filtering a data object for content deemed unacceptable by a user. A data object requested by a viewer program is received. The data object is processed to determine predefined language statements. Information on the determined language statements is inputted into a neural network to produce an output value. A determination is then made as to whether the output value indicates that the data object is unacceptable. Viewer program access to the data object is inhibited upon determining that the data object is unacceptable.

[0050] The foregoing description of the preferred embodiments of the invention has been presented for the purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise form disclosed. Many modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teaching. It is intended that the scope of the invention be limited not by this detailed description, but rather by the claims appended hereto. The above specification, examples and data provide a complete description of the manufacture and use of the composition of the invention. Since many embodiments of the invention can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention, the invention resides in the claims hereinafter appended. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for filtering communications received from over a network for a person-to-person communication program, comprising: receiving a communication for the person-to person communication program; processing the communication to determine predefined language statements; inputting information on the determined language statements into a neural network to produce an output value; determining whether the output value indicates that the communication is unacceptable; forwarding the communication to the person-to-person communication program unchanged if the output value indicates that the communication is acceptable; and performing an action with respect to the communication upon determining that the communication is unacceptable that differs from the forwarding of the communication that occurs if the output value indicates that the communication is acceptable.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the person-to-person communication program is intended for use in a work environment, and wherein determining predefined language statements comprises determining non-work related terms that are often searched for by employees.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the neural network includes an input node for each predefined language statement and wherein inputting the information on the determined non-work related statements comprises inputting a value related to number of occurrences of each non-work related statement on the input node corresponding to the non-work related statement.
 4. The method of claim 3, wherein the non-work related statements are members of the set of statement types comprising at least one of: sport scores, stock quotes, news, hate words, and sexually explicit words.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the person-to-person communication program is intended for use by a user at a predetermined age level, and wherein determining predefined language statements comprises determining inappropriate terms for the predetermined age level.
 6. The method of claim 5, wherein the neural network includes an input node for each inappropriate term for the predetermined age level and wherein inputting the information on the determined inappropriate terms for the predetermined age level comprises inputting a value related to a number of occurrences of each predetermined term on the input node corresponding to the predetermined term.
 7. The method of claim 5, wherein the inappropriate terms for the predetermined age level are members of the set of statement types comprising: inappropriate sexual references for the predetermined age level, inappropriate swear words for the predetermined age level, and inappropriate hate words for the predetermined age level.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the person-to-person communication program comprises an email program or instant messaging program.
 9. The method of claim 1, wherein the communication is received in packets that together comprise the entire communication, and wherein each packet is processed to determine predefined language statements.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein processing the communication comprises determining a weighted number of occurrences of predefined language statements, wherein the neural network includes an input node for each predefined language statement and wherein inputting the information on the determined language statements comprises inputting the weighted number of occurrences of each predefined language statement on the input node corresponding to the predefined language statement.
 11. The method of claim 10, wherein the predefined language statements include unacceptable language statements and content language statements, further comprising: determining proximity of predefined content and unacceptable language statements; and inputting information on the proximity of the predefined language statements at input nodes, wherein the output value is based on the number of occurrences of unacceptable and content language statements and the proximity of content and unacceptable language statements.
 12. The method of claim 1, wherein performing the action with respect to the communication upon determining that the communication is unacceptable comprises inhibiting the person-to-person communication program access to the communication.
 13. The method of claim 12, wherein inhibiting the person-to-person communication program access to the communication upon determining that the communication is unacceptable comprises blocking access to the entire communication.
 14. The method of claim 12, further comprising determining language statements in the communication that are unacceptable, wherein inhibiting the person-to-person communication program access to the communication upon determining that the communication is unacceptable comprises blocking access to the unacceptable language statements and allowing access to language statements not determined to be unacceptable in the communication.
 15. The method of claim 1, wherein the predefined language statements are capable of being modified by an administrator.
 16. A system for filtering communications received from over a network for a person-to-person communication program, comprising: means for receiving a communication for the person-to person communication program; means for processing the communication to determine predefined language statements; means for inputting information on the determined language statements into a neural network to produce an output value; means for determining whether the output value indicates that the communication is unacceptable; means for forwarding the communication to the person-to-person communication program unchanged if the output value indicates that the communication is acceptable; and means for performing an action with respect to the communication upon determining that the communication is unacceptable that differs from the forwarding of the communication that occurs if the output value indicates that the communication is acceptable.
 17. The system of claim 16, wherein the person-to-person communication program is intended for use in a work environment, and wherein the means for determining predefined language statements determines non-work related terms that are often searched for by employees.
 18. The system of claim 16, wherein the person-to-person communication program is intended for use by a user at a predetermined age level, and wherein the means for determining predefined language statements determines inappropriate terms for the predetermined age level.
 19. The system of claim 16, wherein the person-to-person communication program comprises an email program or instant messaging program.
 20. The system of claim 16, wherein the means for processing the communication to determine predefined language statements determines a weighted number of occurrences of predefined language statements, wherein the neural network includes an input node for each predefined language statement and wherein the means for inputting the information on the determined language statements inputs the weighted number of occurrences of each predefined language statement on the input node corresponding to the predefined language statement.
 21. The system of claim 20, wherein the predefined language statements include unacceptable language statements and content language statements, further comprising: means for determining proximity of predefined content and unacceptable language statements; and means for inputting information on the proximity of the predefined language statements at input nodes, wherein the output value is based on the number of occurrences of unacceptable and content language statements and the proximity of content and unacceptable language statements.
 22. The system of claim 16, wherein the means for performing the action with respect to the communication upon determining that the communication is unacceptable inhibits the person-to-person communication program access to the communication.
 23. An article of manufacture for filtering communications received from over a network for a person-to-person communication program, wherein the article of manufacture causes operations to be performed, the operations comprising: receiving a communication for the person-to person communication program; processing the communication to determine predefined language statements; inputting information on the determined language statements into a neural network to produce an output value; determining whether the output value indicates that the communication is unacceptable; forwarding the communication to the person-to-person communication program unchanged if the output value indicates that the communication is acceptable; and performing an action with respect to the communication upon determining that the communication is unacceptable that differs from the forwarding of the communication that occurs if the output value indicates that the communication is acceptable.
 24. The article of manufacture of claim 23, wherein the person-to-person communication program is intended for use in a work environment, and wherein determining predefined language statements comprises determining non-work related terms that are often searched for by employees.
 25. The article of manufacture of claim 24, wherein the neural network includes an input node for each predefined language statement and wherein inputting the information on the determined non-work related statements comprises inputting a value related to number of occurrences of each non-work related statement on the input node corresponding to the non-work related statement.
 26. The article of manufacture of claim 25, wherein the non-work related statements are members of the set of statement types comprising at least one of: sport scores, stock quotes, news, hate words, and sexually explicit words.
 27. The article of manufacture of claim 23, wherein the person-to-person communication program is intended for use by a user at a predetermined age level, and wherein determining predefined language statements comprises determining inappropriate terms for the predetermined age level.
 28. The article of manufacture of claim 27, wherein the neural network includes an input node for each inappropriate term for the predetermined age level and wherein inputting the information on the determined inappropriate terms for the predetermined age level comprises inputting a value related to a number of occurrences of each predetermined term on the input node corresponding to the predetermined term.
 29. The article of manufacture of claim 27, wherein the inappropriate terms for the predetermined age level are members of the set of statement types comprising: inappropriate sexual references for the predetermined age level, inappropriate swear words for the predetermined age level, and inappropriate hate words for the predetermined age level.
 30. The article of manufacture of claim 23, wherein the person-to-person communication program comprises an email program or instant messaging program.
 31. The article of manufacture of claim 23, wherein the communication is received in packets that together comprise the entire communication, and wherein each packet is processed to determine predefined language statements.
 32. The article of manufacture of claim 23, wherein processing the communication comprises determining a weighted number of occurrences of predefined language statements, wherein the neural network includes an input node for each predefined language statement and wherein inputting the information on the determined language statements comprises inputting the weighted number of occurrences of each predefined language statement on the input node corresponding to the predefined language statement.
 33. The article of manufacture of claim 32, wherein the predefined language statements include unacceptable language statements and content language statements, further comprising: determining proximity of predefined content and unacceptable language statements; and inputting information on the proximity of the predefined language statements at input nodes, wherein the output value is based on the number of occurrences of unacceptable and content language statements and the proximity of content and unacceptable language statements.
 34. The article of manufacture of claim 23, wherein performing the action with respect to the communication upon determining that the communication is unacceptable comprises inhibiting the person-to-person communication program access to the communication.
 35. The article of manufacture of claim 34, wherein inhibiting the person-to-person communication program access to the communication upon determining that the communication is unacceptable comprises blocking access to the entire communication.
 36. The article of manufacture of claim 34, further comprising determining language statements in the communication that are unacceptable, wherein inhibiting the person-to-person communication program access to the communication upon determining that the communication is unacceptable comprises blocking access to the unacceptable language statements and allowing access to language statements not determined to be unacceptable in the communication.
 37. The article of manufacture of claim 23, wherein the predefined language statements are capable of being modified by an administrator. 